


Blood, Stitches, and Tears

by TheEarlyKat



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mentions of Anders/Nate, Multi, No Anders without Justice, No Nate Just Yet, Post-Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-29
Updated: 2016-01-04
Packaged: 2018-05-10 03:53:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5570026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheEarlyKat/pseuds/TheEarlyKat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Anders thought he left everything behind in Amaranthine, until Hawke asks him to move in and he finds his Warden uniform while packing. The stains on it are all he has left of his past friends, his past safety.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I have a headcanon that Anders kept his Warden uniform and completely forgot about it until Hawke asks him to move in. Anders finds it while packing and thinks the tears and stains are all he has left of his previous relationships.

The key had been heavy around his neck all day, cold against the hollow of his throat, and, by the time the last patient had been tended to – wounds wrapped and ushered out the door with a polite but hurried motion – a bruise had blossomed all manners of greens and blues along his throat. Anders wrapped a hand around the cold iron, feeling it warm in his grasp, and sent the last whisper of mana to the bruise beneath his knuckles. When he gently lowered the key back to his skin, he shivered at the dampness of the string, greedy for the blood coating his fingers. 

A smile flickered across his face as he moved from the door of the clinic to the table across the room, hand crossing his collarbone to drag his nails along the string. It settled on the same path Hawke had carved out the night before, with his mouth, his teeth, his tongue, hot enough to burn in his thoughts hours later. It had been everything he hadn’t dared to hope and more: his idle fantasies of being loved no longer just a rare, happy dream, worries of hatred and fear, gone in a haze of bliss. Hawke had his arm beneath his shoulders, fingers rubbing small circles against his elbow while he pressed himself up against the warrior’s side, astonishment and relief so strong he’d nearly fallen asleep right then and there. Until Hawke asked him if he’d stay, in the morning, when the lantern should usually be lit and doors pulled open, and Anders had remembered the Templars.   
Reminding him of what he was, of what he couldn’t be, he couldn’t have. That the whole moment – soft words traded in whispers between kisses and softer touches – would never be shared again because he would either be captured or forced to run, again, and Anders hadn’t been able to answer him with such little air in his lungs from the crushing reality of it.

They key had been heavier. Solid in the hand Hawke pressed it into, colder than the fear winding its familiar path around his heart until he was warm again. The Templars were an imagined threat, a future concern, but that moment was real, and it was all he needed to draw in a steadying breath and –

_Stay with me. I want you to be here. Until the day we die._

_Yes. Maker, Hawke, as long as He allows, yes._

A place to call his own that wouldn’t have to be taken apart and put back together at the slightest hint of danger, a place with a bed, a desk and an actual chair. A safe place. Justice had been quiet since the offer, a low rumble in the back of his mind to remind him of his presence when he wasn’t needed for healing, content with the state of his host and promises of it only getting better. 

Anders hummed quietly to himself as he picked through the crumpled papers and bloodied bandages draped over empty potion bottles and glass vials of herbs readied for grinding. There wasn’t much in the clinic that was truly his that was necessary to have in Hawke’s – their – estate. There were few important herbs that needed to be dried in a cooler area and seeds he could ask about planting that he picked out from the clutter and pocketed. A robe and the few pants he hadn’t yet torn into rags were in a chest to be folded, and possible the books, ones on some of the more delicate manners of herbalism and the pages of poems Justice had been given, if they weren’t already damaged by the mold and moisture that persisted in Darktown.

The bed was closer than the chest shoved against the furthest wall of the small, back area he’d made into a private room. It was more of a closet, with the way he had to keep his steps short to avoid knocking pointy knees against stone, and calling it his bedroom was an even further stretch. The mattress was nothing more than a pile of rotting crates and musty, moth-eaten blankets piled over them until he stopped feeling the splinters when he rolled over in previous nights. When this was the only bed he had. 

The joy of the idea of having Hawke’s bed as his own, now, was made stronger by the fact that, yes, the books were still together and though some pages were molding at the edges and the spines were cracked, it was no more damage than could be easily reversed, and Anders wedged a yellowed nail into one of the creases as Justice hummed his own approval. His host would sleep well that night, where the mattress was soft and Hawke’s arms softer. 

Anders shifted to the chest with a bounce; it only took one to cross the room. He knelt and dusted the lock of rust and webs from misuse. It was safer to keep his meager belongings somewhere hidden, and with those belongings being items that would oust him immediately as a mage, he thought, pulling the extra robe out, it was even better to never let them see the light of day in Kirkwall. 

The pants, he found, were not as numerous and he’d hoped, and the ones he did have had signs of rats – tears along the seams and pellets in the pockets – and something heavy was tucked inside. Anders grimaced, almost fearful to unwrap the leggings and find an actual rat inside, and gingerly unfolded the clothing. 

It fell to the hard packed ground with a flutter of cloth and Anders didn’t hear the clinic door slide open despite all the rusted hinges for all the clamoring in the back of his mind and the blood pounding in his ears – much less than was actually flaking onto the ground. 

The Keep and all its glory, the winding stairs, the columns towering in the main room with its gilded throne, the stables just outside the walls reinforced with dwarven craftsmanship, it all flashed behind his eyes as much of Justice’s memories as his own until his head was spinning and he couldn’t see the patterned robe before him. 

“Anders?” It sounded strangely familiar and the mage buried his hands in the fabric of the cloth, fingering wrapping around buckles and digging into padding. “Anders? Do you need any help?” A hand was heavy on his shoulder, heat down his arm, and it was so much like the night before, not the soft hands and blistered hands of an archer but hard leather skin, and the keep was gone, the double vision finally settling, and Anders blinked away tears he hadn’t know he’d shed. “Does that have to come with us?”

Anders looked up from the striped uniform to glance at Hawke and his hands were already stuffing the robe back into the chest before the man could get a closer look, could start asking questions. 

“No, no, it’s fine. It’s something old – doesn’t fit me anything – would make better scraps than an actual shirt.” He winced and slammed the chest shut, hands splayed out on the dusty top for a moment longer before patting the clothes besides his knees. “These are all I need.” Justice was cautious in his thoughts, pressing close, but gently, sharing the same memories and aiding him to stand. Anders didn’t think he could, even with the spirit’s help. 

“That’s it?” Garrett nudges the few pants and the robe with a boot, the incredulous in his voice nearly perfectly covering the question aside from the higher pitch. Anders was thankful he didn’t ask, more thankful than he’d ever been. 

“That’s it.” Anders rubbed his palms on his thighs. “Though, I’m sure with enough searching I can find some other things.” The hand was back on his shoulder and the tremble in them stilled enough for him to breathe deeply, and then Hawke’s warmth was gone, replaced with a chill, as the man scooped up the clothes. 

“I’ll bring these up, love. Promised to see Varric sometime today and I can make it an excuse.”

_To take the long way back. To give you time._ Anders exhaled and nodded, loving the man ever more, even as his footsteps faded away behind the clinic door.


	2. Chapter 2

The fire had burned down to warm coals and Anders gingerly pulled himself out from beneath the sheets to toss a log on top of them with a gentle nudge of magic to let the wood catch faster. Heat fanned across his face and soaked into the borrowed night robes to replace what had been lost when he left the cocoon that was Hawke’s arms, yet still he shivered. 

Tonight had been everything Anders had dreamed of and more, but he couldn’t find it in him to enjoy the fullness of his belly and the warmth waiting him back beneath the sheets with his lover in an actual bed. Not with the heaviness in his mind, haunting his thoughts and bringing up past memories. 

It wasn’t Justice that flickered through his thoughts, picking out the ones that kept him awake, tossing and turning on a mattress so soft he should have been asleep in minutes. The spirit was a soft rumble, closer to a purr, quiet and showing no displeasure at the events sine carrying the last odds and ends he owned up to the estate. The idea alone that, for once, Justice was content, was nearly enough to breach the darkness slowly building in the back of his mind, and Anders wrapped his arms around himself as he crossed the room, wedging his feet into Hawke’s slippers and wiggling his toes in the wool before padding down the stairs. 

It was darker in the foyer despite the larger fireplace, but the coals had grown cold since Bohdan was sent home for the night and the shadows stretching out from their corners were almost comforting when he was in the large room with its familiar walls, spacious compared to the closet he slept in, unable to find a shred of moonlight to keep the walls from closing in around him. He was safe in Hawke’s estate, like a mouse in its hole, where the cats could not reach it. The shadows here, where Hawke lit up everything, could be no darker than the ones he already carried. 

Justice stirred at the thought and pressed close to his mind. His hands flickered soft with blue and Anders found his hands curling from their tight embrace around his biceps before he dropped them to his sides. 

“It’s not like that,” he sighed, and the pressure in his mind grew stronger as the spirit searched for the answer. Anders let him, giving up the image that left him restless. The resulting pang of sympathy that struck him had him groping for the mantle of the fireplace and he placed a hand over his heart to feel his pulse slow, Justice just beneath his skin. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean – no, they’re your memories too.” 

Memories that, even together, neither of could fully complete. The moment of their joining had been hazy outside of the sword melting in his chest and the Templar screaming for his death. What had happened to the Wardens, the Vigil, his friends…Anders shifted his hand to his other breast and pressed hard the scar tissue there. He knew what must have become of his friends. The bloodstained cloth still hidden in his clinic, buried under the tattered pants he planned to turn into bandages, spoke for the missing moments.   
Anders returned to the room to pick up his robe and kicked off the slippers before scribbling a note for Hawke. His letters were slanted and he cursed under his breath when a knuckle smeared the ink. He had half a mind to start anew if it wasn’t simply an excuse to stay in the manor for a few more precious seconds. He could be leaving this for good if he left the note, left at all, still unsure of where he stood with Hawke. For all he knew, the man could change his mind, finally see the turmoil within him and deem it too dark, too heavy, for a man that had been through enough already without adding to it and kick him out. And how could Anders blame him when he’d killed the man he loved already, and most likely left the one prior for dead as well? The evidence was still is in clinic, hiding like every other one of his mistakes. 

Anders bit his tongue and signed the note. What a fool he had been, to believe this moment would last. 

Justice made no complaint when he threw open the secret door in the cellar. The silence was almost as sickening as hanging the key on the lock, left to rust if things played out like he thought, and Anders stuffed his hands into his armpits as he traded the warmth of Hawke’s estate, no longer his, for the drafty tunnel that led to Darktown. To the damp and the sewage he could truly call his. 

Cold, dark, and dank, an entire city hidden from the light beneath the roads aboveground, with alleys and cave-ins that parents warned of because of the monsters that lived there; where they prowled for the innocent and unsuspecting. It was where he belonged, as well. Kirkwall’s rabid abomination. 

Justice flared at the thought, and Anders shoved it away with a scowl and a bitten back snarl that died in his throat as a sob when he yanked the doors open to his clinic. There was a bloody uniform hidden in the darkest parts of the corner of the Undercity, stained red by the life of his friends. How many people had he killed that day? Whose blood was mixed, for the last time, with the Darkspawn ichor that turned the blue stitching purple? Had Nathaniel tried to stop him? 

Anders stumbled away from the door, hands grasping for the cots lined along the room to keep him moving forward. One more step, one more cot, he couldn’t go back. He couldn’t run again. He’d run from the Wardens, from Karl, from Hawke, now. He knew he was wrong, knew he was a monster, and so he ran and hid his mistakes.

He dropped to his knees in front of the chest, hands shaking as he tried and fumbled with the lock, wincing when it slipped from his grasp to bang against the solid wood and echo in the quiet. The room was small and walled on all sides and still he felt the need to glance over his shoulder, to reassure himself that no one - or, Maker forbid, Hawke - had heard and come wandering, curious, into his clinic to find him – to find his regret. 

Anders brought the Warden uniform out of the chest and brought it to his chest, holding it close enough to feel his knuckled press into his sternum, and Justice pressed close to feel its memories. Flashes of though left him dizzy and winded as Justice’s memories clashed against his. Darkspawn screeches carried over the shout of the Templar but their claws and stolen weapons didn’t leave him flinching like the remembered red-hot stab of the sword of mercy as Justice melted it as fast as it slid into him and Anders shifted his arms until he felt the edges of the scars against his hands. 

He had only these to remember the life he had. A scar, no more hated than the ones across his back, and a bloody robe soaked with the lifeblood of his friends, the stains cracking like the promises he’d made to them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter might come a bit slow because of the android au I've been working on with a friend, as a warning.


End file.
